TMP Wars and Changing Media Consumption Patterns

My Alternative Logo for TMP

Over the past week I noticed that an old post of mine from May of 2017 was getting a lot of traffic.  The post is titled "I've Been Banned From TMP and I Feel Fine" and you can guess the topic from the title.

I've got no issues with being banned.  TMP is a privately run site and can choose who can have access to the "service" and who can't.  I was a free user and really don't have any rights to access.  The degree to which these decisions are good business practice is another matter but the proprietor both makes those decisions and deals with the ramifications.

Against my better judgement, I hopped onto the site to see what was driving the new traffic and was was not surprised to see there is yet another flame war.  This one was a bit different as it wasn't with a competing forum or subgroup of TMP users but with an Advertiser in the form of Richard Clarke owner of the TooFatLardies rules publishing company.  TMP's revenue model is add driven and getting into a public snit with an advertiser seems to be really, really silly.  I suspect Mr Clarke has also learned the lesson about wrestling with a pig in his pen.  You just get muddy and the pig kind of likes it.

For fun, I looked up TMP's traffic stats - I use a number of paid tools for investment purposes but even TMP's self reported stats tell a pretty damning.  Lets just look at those self-reported stats:

                Hits.                  Avg Daily Visitors

2Q'17:    24.7MM.           4Q'17     8.9k/day
2Q'20:    15.0MM.           Current.  6.6k/day

Wow - that's a 40% decline over three years.  To honest the decline is even worse once traffic for 'bots are separated out but an ominous trend when overall online traffic metrics are skyrocketing.  Theres a similar trend in terms of average daily visitors which has declined for just over 8.9k/day in 2017 to a current level of 6.6k/day.

While it is tempting to just continue to beat up TMP and they sure make it easy to do so, similar sites like the Lead Adventures Forum are also seeing traffic declines - not nearly as large but still steadily down.

The tabletop industry as a whole has never been better - so why are these general purpose sites seeing a decline in both traffic and business relevance?

In my opinion, there are several factors at play from both a consumer and business perspective.  Now just because I say it doesn't mean its accurate and your milage may vary.

Consumers:
Like or hate Facebook, general purpose platform like it are winning the consumer eyeball wars because they work and provide a single user interface to use.  Special purpose forums like TMP have their own unique infrastructure and interface (I never really figured how to post pictures on TMP) and that creates a form of user "friction" and a tech backlog as they just dont have the resources to keep pace with the competition.  Both facebook and Youtube have a simple interface that once you learn it it works for every site / group / topic your interested in.  One of my main uses for TMP was reference material on uniforms and other historical minutia - now there are innumerable Facebook groups on the same topics with integrated images and a simple user interface.  Other than watching the spectacle of people squabbling over how HMGS should run a convention, I really have no effective use for TMP.

Business:
The internet has made it even easier for a business to interact directly with its customers on a global basis.  A small manufacture of historical figures used to have to market through physical game conventions (the vendor booth) or sites like TMP or magazines to announce and sell products.  Now they can reach out directly or use very sophisticated marketing tools to target their audience.  Throw on top of that the evolution of platforms like "KickStarter" which effectively perform a combination market test and trade finance platform and the need for an intermediary site really needs to be questioned.

In real life, I'm a very active tech investor and have observed these trends impacting a number of industries.  I am intrigued by the impact and implications these forces will have on the historical gaming industry and will be doing some more research on the topic.  The downside of that for you is there will be a few more really boring "business trend" posts on the blog.

Back to TMP - I fear the site and, others like it, are condemned to a continual downward slide in relevance and economic viability., with the only variation being the slope of the decline.  Like large format department stores, their value in the delivery chain has been supplanted by superior technology.  I suspect the questionable decisions of TMP's owner will hasten it's demise but that's just speeding up the inevitable. 

3D Printed Sabot Bases - My first CAD designed project

After watching some of fellow club members Steve's 3D printing videos and seeing a wave of "how-to" use sketch-up from the various You-Tube woodworking channels I follow, I decided to give 3-D design another go.

I present to you my first 3D-Printed creation - a sabot base which has a shelf for a unit label along the back.

Not the most exciting of topics but every journey starts with a single step forward (I know that was really corny). But there is a twist here.  A lot of rules I currently play with (Alter of Freedom, Blucher, and even my version of AoF for the Russo-Japanese War) require tracking multiple levels of fatigue for a unit.  At the club we currently use small red disks, which are either placed behind the unit or on the base itself as shown:

As you can see, the table can get very cluttered and often I get confused while moving a base, as the associated markers can get left behind and mixed up with other ones.

Hmm, seems like there could be a better way - what if we used the label shelf for more that simple unit ID tracking. 

No, that would be impossible, but yet.....

What if I line the label shelf with some "steel paper", put the unit tag on top and used small neodymium magnets to track unit status?  Why that might just work.....

Pictured is a sabot base with the ferrous paper attached and 3 magnets to mark this Japanese Regiment (1st Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Divsion) has three fatigue levels.  I plan on painting the magnets red so they stand out more and envision using other colored magnets mark other status types.

I can see using a system like this will really speed up convention games and keep the tabletop really tidy and easier to play on.

I made three prototypes for my first go.  The interior sabot dimensions are 40x40mm for the two smaller bases and the larger one is 60x30mm.

I'll continue to refine the design - one change that I know will happen is to open the floor of the sabot base so it's just a 5mm lip running across the interior.  That will be enough to hold a base in place while reducing the print times and filament used per base.

I'm strangely excited to try these out on the tabletop as I think it really will improve gameplay.  We'll see....

I do have one warning here - Historically, I have found trying to learn CAD really hard and frustrating.  One of the primary reasons for my past failures was I'd give up after 30 or so minutes, pronounce the whole the impossible and start looking for third parties to blame - just like our idiot President Trump.  This latest attempt was more successful as I dedicated 2+ hours to learning the software and tried to imitate one of the aforementioned woodworking tutorials - I had one window open on my mac playing the how-to video and a second one open with sketch-up and me trying to mimic what I saw.  "Monkey see the video for 30 or so seconds, Monkey do in sketch-up".  While tedious, it worked.  Now I'm nowhere near proficient in the software but I can least navigate it and have a solid base of knowledge to build on.

I fell obliged to restate a point from above.  The whole sequence of "Monkey see the video for 30 or so seconds, Monkey do in sketch-up" isn't really true.  It was more like "Monkey see the video for 30 or so seconds, Monkey try in sketch-up, Monkey re-watch segment, Monkey try again and then  Monkey curses, Monkey re-re-watches segment.........", well you get the point.

Still after awhile the core concepts of how to use a mouse and the myriad of tools/options one has in the software started to become clearer to me.  Mouse clicking is different for CAD the normal PC use so you do need to learn some new basic techniques - single, double and triple clicking have different uses.

The moral of this story - CAD is actually a lot of fun but don't give it a try unless you can devote 2+ hours for your first iteration.  I think it's worth the effort and if a moron like me can do it then anyone else can also.

My woodworking Sketch-Up tutorial of choice is from Steve Ramsey's woodworking channel "Woodworking for Mere Mortals".  Here's a link to the specific video.  I like Mr Ramsey's communication style but there are literally thousands of how to use sketch up videos on you-tube - find someone who you don't mind listening too and give it a go.

3D Printed Type 92 Japanese Tankette

 There's a interesting thread over on the WWPD forum by Nate (aka Rabid Monkey) that discusses the design and creation of 28mm vehicles using CAD software and a 3D printer.  Nate is an extremely well skilled operator and one of his creations is a 28mm Type 92 Japanese Tankette.  It's so nice I bought two!  Each model comes with 11 pieces which are pictured to the left (oops, the turret is missing - well wait for the next picture).

 The model goes together extremely well - the part fitting was perfect and the detail is amazing.  As per Nate's suggestion, I used super glue which does bond very fast given the porous nature of the printed material (its a type of ABS, I think).  Test fitting all the parts is a must.  As these are pro type models they're a bit delicate - the sharp eyed amongst you will notice that I replaced the Medium Machine gun on the right turret with some brass rod.  I broke the gun off and lost in the carpeting under my workbench.  I think there's enough missing parts under the workbench for a whole army, but that's material for a future post.

 Next is a shot of the Type 92's primed.  As with most of my miniatures, I prime with grey auto primer as it helps me see the details and its' both very reliable and cheap.

A picture from the reverse side.  The detail that can be added via the 3D printing process is amazing.  For example the inside portions of the tracks and wheels are detailed and the rivets are both at scale and easily visible.

3D printing technology is still in it's very early stages and currently requires both a very talented designer and a fairly expensive piece of equipment.  I think it has great promise for just in time manufacturing and our hobby in particular over the next 5-10 years.  Similar to the way we can buy rules on PDF's or configured for tablets, I think we'll see the day when figures are purchased via the download of limited use cad designs which we then print out a preset number of copies.

Very exciting stuff.

Trafalgar Test Battle - The Conclusion

 Here is the second part of the Trafalgar test game Battle report - turns 12 to 22.  The French fleet continues to press it's position advantage and pours heavy raking fire into the HMS Victory.  The British begin to land some more blows as the line of third rates (second group from the bottom) begin to fire on the the French 1st rate (Austerlitz) and their second rate, the Commerce de Paris.

 By turn 14 both the HMS Victory and Phoebe have been reduced to dis-masted wrecks and they have fallen out of the line.  The Austerlitz has taken a pounding but is still game for the fight.

 The French heavies manage to cross over the Britsh third raters and and succed in dismasting the HMS Conqueror and the beat up the Orion, setting both on fire.  So far, the British have lost three ships to none for the French but that's about to change.

The British fleet pulls a crafty move and shifts it's entire focus on the the line of 5 French 3rd rates (at the very top of the picture).  The French heavies (a First Rates and 2 second raters pass along the British but damage has slowed them and once they turn to re-engage they can not catch up.  The line of French Frigates (lower left) is fast enough to catch up and harass the English fleet as they pound the French third raters.  At this point my camera battery died so no more pictures.  Lets just say the British fleet got some revenge as they sank 2 French 3rd raters and heavily damaged two others at the cost of one of theirs and another frigate.

Overall, the battle went to the French with the following tally:

British Losses
Sunk: Conqueror (3rd Rate), Orion (3rd Rate), Agamemnon (3rd Rate, small) and the Frigates Phoebe and Macedonian.
Taken as a prize by the French: HMS Victory (oh the shame)

French Losses
Sunk: Bucentaure (2nd Rate), Orion and Lion (3rd Raters)

As for the Trafalgar ruleset, I liked them but need to get a better grasp of the finer points of fleet movement.  The game was really won for the French in the first six moves before contact.  The importance of maneuver makes sense from a historical perspective, but all the advantages seem to go the way of the French early on.  Once the basics of the rules are understood the game plays very fast and is suitable for larger fleet actions

The use of an iPad for damage tracking was a big success but the spreadsheet tool i was using needs a good bit of refinement.

Trafalgar with an iPad

 I decided to get out my 1/2400 Napoleonic fleets and have a go at a game with a twist - I'm using an iPad to track damage of the British fleet and just pen and paper for the French.  The first picture shows all the game supplies one needs to play a game of Trafalgar.  I'll ramble on about the tracking software later on.

 The next picture shows the fleets in there starting positions, with the British in the lower left and the French at the other end of the table.  Both fleets consist of 12 ships eachs - 1 First Rate, 2 Second Rates, 5 3rd Rates, 1 Small 3rd Rate (64 guns) and 3 frigates.  The miniatures are from Figurehead.

 A close up of the British fleet.  The flag ship (HMS Victory) is leading the center column.  My apologies for the rather bland seascape - it's just a blue piece of canvas that hasn't been trimmed for the table top.  While not the best, it does work for a test game.

 First Contact!  As the fleets where closing the wind shifted in the favor of the French which allowed them to close fast and set up long range raking shots from the Austerlitz (1st Rate) and Commerce de Paris (2nd Rate) on the HMS Victory.  Fate was not kind to the Brits as 3 critical hits were rolled and not saved.  The Vicrory's rudder was jammed and she can't change course until she rolls a "6" (on a D6) to repair the damage.

 The Fleets continue to close but the hapless Victory only plows ahead into even more deadly raking fire from the French Heavies.  But all is not lost for our plucky British - their frigate line (top right) is giving the French 74's  something to think about.  A critical hit from the frigate Phoebe has set the Orion (a third rate) on fire.  Apparently, uncontrolled fires on wooden ship stuffed with gunpowder are a bad thing.  The Phoebe did pay a price as she lost her foremast in the exchange and will be significantly slower.  How does the battle turn out?  Well you must wait for a second post....

 The real goal of the game was to play around with using an iPad as a game tool.  The picture to the left shows an individual ship's damage sheet (in this case the Victory).  Each ship has a similar page.

The neat thing about tracking electronically is that individual ship data can feed into a summary listing so a player can get a good understanding of his fleet status at a glance.  The formating is crude as it's just a prototype but I think there is real promise here with the technology.  I'm just using a spreadsheet now but it works.

As far as practicality, using a electronic tracking form is likely more trouble than it's worth if there are only a handful of ship per side (say 2 or 3 each).  It becomes incredibly useful when playing large fleet actions where one can become confused easily.  I've also tested a version that sends it data to a third party (game umpire).  One of the side benefit of using this approach is that players can send out fleet lists before a battle and allow players to get a good understanding of the forces - that saves time on game day which leads to more game time vs set up time.

I'll be doing some more prototyping over the Christmas holiday and hopefully will refine the tool so it can be used for multiple game formats.  I'll be trying Uncharted Seas next.

I would be very interested in anyones thoughts on how to improve the concept of electronic tracking or other ideas for how to use an iPad with gaming.